


all of my heroes die all alone

by chelicerata



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Peter Parker Whump, Pining, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelicerata/pseuds/chelicerata
Summary: “And you didn’t have to nearly die trying to save my life today, so now we’re even,” Tony says.His tone must not be as steady as he thought, because Peter frowns.“Wait,” he asks. “Are youmadat me?”Peter's hurt. Tony's not handling it well.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 36
Kudos: 187
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	all of my heroes die all alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sparcina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparcina/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box! Your prompts were super inspiring and I tried to combine a few - I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Set in an ‘everyone’s alive again somehow’ post-IW AU, several years down the road. 
> 
> Title is from Taylor Swift's "The Archer".

The safehouse’s bathroom is cramped, barely enough standing room for the two of them. Tony coaxes Peter’s arm off of his shoulders and leans him back against the bathroom sink, his head tipping all the way back until it hits the mirror on the front of the medicine cabinet. His left eye is shining with what’s going to turn into an impressive black eye. He groans.

“Hanging in there?” Tony murmurs. The thumbs up Peter gives him is mostly steady, but his eyes look worryingly out of it. 

“FRI, baby girl, please tell me you have some good news,” Tony says. “Long range communications? Anything?”

“Sorry, boss,” she says. “My self repair module is fixing the EMP damage as fast as I can, but my systems are only ten percent back online. Estimated time until communications are back up is six hours at a minimum.” Great. “But I do have the capability to scan Peter’s injuries, if you’d like?”

“You know me so well, it’s like I built you myself,” he says, distracted by the way his heart feels like it’s in his throat. “Yes. That. Do that.”

Peter’s absolutely filthy, bloody and bruised, and underneath that drawn with exhaustion. His tipped-back head exposes the long, pale line of his throat, and Tony’s immediately disgusted with himself for even noticing. 

“Boss,” FRIDAY says.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he says.

“Peter has a broken radius in his left arm, four ribs cracked on the left side, and a severely sprained right ankle. There was some internal bleeding and a mild concussion, but they appear to be nearly healed.” He can feel his shoulders getting tighter with every listed-off injury. “The most serious of his external wounds is on his upper left thigh, from where the plane fuselage impaled him.”

Tony flinches.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes. 

“Due to Peter’s enhanced healing abilities, he does not need immediate medical attention. However, I would recommend setting the broken arm to prevent it from healing incorrectly.”

Fuck. Okay. Okay. Tony breathes through his nose and unpeels his left hand from where it’s had his right arm in a vice grip. No immediate medical attention. Good. Great. No comms until FRIDAY repairs her systems overnight. Less good. Maybe this safehouse has an alarm that triggered when he opened the front door, so maybe they’ll be getting a rescue sooner rather than later even without comms – but maybe not, who knows.

But that’s fine.

Peter’s fine.

He’s just-

Hurt.

“I can hear the lights,” Peter mumbles. It snaps Tony’s brain back to attention.

“What?” he asks, with a faint pang of alarm.

“The fluorescents,” Peter says, eyes focusing in on Tony’s for the first time since the plane crash. “I can hear them. It hurts.”

Right. Even Tony can hear the faint, irritating buzz if he concentrates on it. He looks around a little helplessly - he’s pretty sure every light in this place is a shitty fluorescent, but maybe-

Peter frowns.

“What're you- you’re not actually-” He tries to struggle upright, but flinches and grabs at his side with his right hand. “You’re so-” He cuts off with an inarticulate noise, shaking his head like he’s trying to focus.

Tony doesn’t know how to react to that, and after a moment he decides not to react at all. He’s felt off balance, wrong-footed, ever since that excruciating conversation a week ago, when Peter had tried to kiss him, awkward and earnest and starry-eyed, and Tony had - for once in his goddamn life - done the responsible thing to do when your barely legal mentee comes onto you, and said no. 

After kissing back once or thrice. But he _had_ said no, which has to count for something. And he’d even kept it professional, afterwards, professional enough to power through the awkwardness and go on a mission with Peter, despite the fact that Peter could barely look him in the eye. A lot of good that did him - it had just gotten them both an awkward mission, a HYDRA-sabotaged plane, and a tiny safehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway.

“God, I feel so gross right now,” Peter mumbles. 

Clean up. That, he can do.

“Can you get that off yourself?” Tony asks, motioning towards Peter’s spider suit. He finally remembers to deactivate his own suit, the nanites peeling back into the containment unit. Pieces of Peter’s suit are in shreds, tacky with blood and sticking to the open cuts dotting his legs and torso. Peter looks down at it and frowns, blinking slowly, like he’s trying to process the question. “Actually, no, don’t answer that. Cracked ribs. The worst, am I right? I’ve got it.”

He taps Peter’s chest – gently - to deactivate the suit, then – even more gently - starts to pull it down off his body. Peter hisses in pain every time it pulls at an open cut that’s already started healing and closing over, and when it gets to the wound on his thigh he lets out a high, breathless noise. It’s stopped bleeding, probably already a few days into the healing process by a normal person’s standards, but it still looks painful, an ugly, lurid red. Tony has to pause there to gently tease the suit off it, putting his other hand on Peter’s right hip to steady himself.

He’s face to face, literally, with the fact that the only thing Peter wears underneath his suit is a pair of tight fitting black boxer briefs, shocking against the pale white of his skin.

Tony clears his throat and steadfastly ignores it.

“Does it need stitches?” he asks, nodding at Peter’s thigh.

Peter frowns down at it, assessing, too knowledgeable about the exact limits of his body’s healing.

“No,” he says after a moment, “they’ll be worthless tomorrow anyway. I just shouldn’t get it wet, probably.” He blinks. “You know how to do stitches?”

“Why the disbelief? I’ve been doing this a long time, some of us don’t have magic spider powers,” Tony says, slightly unsteady as he looks over Peter’s body. With the suit off, the full extent of the damage is obvious - his entire left side is covered in an array of horrifying purpling-black bruises, and it’s hard to remember that it’s not as bad as it looks.

Except – well, except it is as bad as it looks, exactly as bad. Exactly as painful. It’s just that in a week it’ll all be gone, good as new, so it doesn’t even register to Peter as something he has to be concerned about.

Tony realizes, suddenly, that he’s been rubbing his thumb in circles on Peter’s hip, grounding himself. He snatches his hand back like he’s been burned. He jerks his head up to meet Peter’s eyes, an unreadable expression on his face.

“So-”

“I can’t-”

They both stop. 

“I was just- I can’t exactly move right now, or I’d-” Peter says.

“You really think I’d sit here and make you clean yourself up?” Tony says, fumbling around for a washcloth. “Come on.”

Peter must be in bad shape, because he doesn’t protest at all, just closes his eyes again and lets Tony get to work. 

Tony kneels there, right on the cold tile floor, knees already aggressively complaining, and wipes all the blood and dirt and grime off of every bruised inch of Peter’s body, Peter biting his lip against pained little sounds every time Tony brushes up against a sore spot.

Afterwards, he leans back and looks up at Peter’s face, tossing the filthy washcloth to the side. Peter’s looking at the bathtub with a longing expression. It’s nothing special, barely large enough to fit an adult man, nothing like what Tony could give him if they were back at his place, which is – an incredibly inappropriate thought to have when Peter’s standing in front of him injured like this, actually.

Not that Peter would mind. Peter had, in fact, made it very, very clear how much he wouldn’t mind Tony having inappropriate thoughts about him, and Tony had shut it down, because-

Well. Obviously.

Tony leans over and turns on the faucet.

Peter hesitates, then says: “I don’t think I can get in by myself. Or, uh…” his eyes dart downwards, towards his boxers.

“Why, Mr. Parker, are you taking advantage of me?” Tony says lightly. Peter frowns.

“Don’t,” he says. “Not after- please don’t.”

So that’s a ‘no’ on ‘casual jokes to clear the awkwardness in the air,’ then.

Tony peels off the boxers, pointedly not looking but unable to avoid feeling the way his hands skim down the sides of Peter’s thighs. Then he stands up, knees veritably screaming at him.

Tony carefully, carefully lowers him down into the tub, minding Peter’s injured side. His left knee sticks up out of the bath, while his right leg lays flat so as not to put pressure on his twisted ankle. Peter’s eyes droop shut as he melts into the water.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” Tony says. Peter mumbles something that sounds like vague assent.

Tony escapes into the hallway and starts rummaging through the closet until he finds a SHIELD issue first-aid kit, bringing it into the tiny kitchen and sorting through it until he finds the painkillers. He holds some up to the light to confirm they’re the proprietary extra-strength formulation for superpowered humans, mutants, aliens, and other biological oddities. He grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water from the tap.

Then he clutches the edge of the counter and squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to have a panic attack in the middle of the fucking kitchen.

It comes to him in panicked flashes, brain skipping back and forth like a broken record. The violent shudder of the bomb going off. The choking smoke and burning heat, hands slipping with sweat as he grabbed at the controls and tried to steer the plane into a gentler glide - the panic as they got closer and closer to the ground and his mind instinctively started doing calculations and saying _this isn’t going to be pretty._

Peter gently pulling Tony’s hands away from the controls, and looking at him, and saying “it’s okay, I’ve got this.”

Peter’s version of _I got this_ turning out to be wrapping himself around Tony and letting the full impact of a plane crash hit him in the back.

Tony grabs at his hair, presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, hard, until he sees stars. The choked, wet noise Peter had made when he had been hit is going to be seared into Tony’s brain for the rest of his life.

He’ll put it right next to the sensation of Peter’s body dissolving in his hands. Something else to keep him company at night.

When Tony gets back into the bathroom, he thinks Peter’s asleep for a moment, until he cracks an eye open.

“Hi,” he says. He looks sharper already, more alert. There’s a washcloth abandoned on the side of the tub, like he had gotten partway through washing himself before giving up.

“Hi yourself,” Tony says, sitting on the floor next to the tub. He hands Peter the pills, then hands him the water, then realizes Peter has only one working hand and can’t actually take the water. Instead, he holds it up to Peter’s lips and helps him drink.

Peter clears his throat.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Literally the least I could do,” Tony says. He nods at the abandoned washcloth. “Get bored halfway through?”

“Just give me a minute,” Peter mumbles, sounding exhausted. “I’ve got it. You can go.”

“Yeah, kid, you’ve really got it covered,” Tony says blandly. He picks the washcloth up and grabs the cheap, generic soap SHIELD apparently stocks their safehouses with. Peter’s other eye flies open.

“Seriously, you don’t have to do that,” he says.

“And you didn’t have to nearly die trying to save my life today, so now we’re even,” Tony says.

His tone must not be as steady as he thought, because Peter frowns.

“Wait,” he asks. “Are you _mad_ at me?”

Mad isn’t quite the word. Terrified, petrified, scared out of his fucking mind – all those might be a little more fitting.

“My suit was fine, Peter,” he says, moving around so he can wash Peter’s back and, coincidentally, not have to look him in the eye. He swipes up and down the pale, trim expanse, eyes involuntarily darting to the smattering of freckles on one shoulder. He imagines, vividly, putting his mouth on them.

No. Nope. He’s already made this decision. He’s not going to ruin this.

“Your suit was _totally non-functioning_! What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, let me figure out a solution that doesn’t involve using you as a human shield? You can’t keep being reckless with your own life-”

Peter jerks away from him, hissing in discomfort as he does so.

“You know, for someone who turned me down, you sure have a lot of opinions on what I do with my life,” he says tightly.

“Opinions? I don’t have any opinions,” Tony says, with a tinge of desperation. “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

“ _Seriously?_ I don’t understand why you-” Peter cuts himself off with a frustrated noise. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Kid-”

“ _Tony._ ”

Peter’s glaring at him now. Tony deserves it. He’s handling this terribly, compulsively pressing on the bruise hanging between them. But he just can’t – he just can’t. It _would_ be a catastrophically bad idea, and he had had enough self control to remember that when Peter had kissed him.

The problem is, of course, that he’s always loved catastrophically bad ideas.

“Can we talk about how terrible I am later, when you’re more than an hour removed from nearly dying?” Tony asks, voice coming out rawer than he would have liked.

Peter slumps, all the fight leaving him in an instant. He balances one arm on the rim of the tub, lets Tony pick it up and drag the washcloth down his forearm. He looks up at Tony, face exhausted. There’s a droplet of water hanging off one eyelash. Tony reaches up and smooths a curl back from his forehead, and Peter’s eyes flutter shut, head tipping into the touch.

He really is beautiful.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack, kid,” Tony says, hoarse. “I’m old. I can’t take it.”

“Sorry,” Peter murmurs, half hearted.

“No you’re not,” Tony says. There’s a scraped-raw patch of skin over his cheekbone. Tony picks up the washcloth with his other hand and gently rubs at the blood. Underneath, the skin’s already half healed. Peter’s eyes open slightly, glancing up at Tony through his eyelashes.

“No, I’m not,” he agrees, and even through the bone-deep exhaustion in his voice Tony can hear the stubbornness. “You would have died. I’m not sorry you didn’t get crushed by a plane.”

“You almost _did_ die,” Tony says, tightly. He presses his fingers gently against the back of Peter’s skull, and Peter’s head drops forward, exposing the back of his neck. It’s not until he’s watching his own trembling hands pick up the shampoo bottle that he remembers this part isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary. But he needs to do something else with his hands or he’s going to start screaming. And Peter makes an involuntary, pleased little noise when Tony starts massaging his scalp.

“I didn’t, though,” Peter says, dogged. “I can take a lot. I can take way more than this.”

Tony knows that. He _knows_ that.

“Tony?”

“Is it so bad if I think you shouldn’t have to?” Tony says, finally.

“That’s funny coming from the man who asked me to join his superhero club when I was in high school,” Peter says, smiling a little like it’s ridiculous (which maybe it had been, but whatever), as if ‘high school’ wasn’t still disturbingly close in the past. “What did you think was going to happen?”

“You were already getting hurt. Is it that crazy I thought I could protect you?”

When Peter looks at him, it’s with the eyes of someone who’s been failed to be protected, again and again and again, who died on an alien planet billions of miles from home with nothing but Tony’s poor excuse for comfort.

“It wasn’t crazy. But, Tony… you can’t, not really. You don’t need to.” He does, but there’s no point in arguing. Tony starts to rinse out his hair. “You know, that’s the thing about this whole superhero deal - maybe sometimes I can protect _you_ instead.”

Tony looks at Peter’s face, set and earnest, and his heart twists painfully.

“Is this what I make other people go through?” Tony asks, blinking hard. “Because I’m belatedly apologizing to all of them. The stubborn self-sacrifice thing is not fun to deal with from this end.” Peter looks like he wants to respond to that, so Tony clears his throat and stands up. “Okay, that’s as clean as you’re getting unless I want a knee replacement.”

Afterwards, they bandage up injuries that will be gone by tomorrow and jury rig a sling for Peter’s arm. There’s nothing to be done for his ribs except wait. The leg wound is by far the worst, and Tony gets down on his knees _(again)_ to wrap it, studiously keeping his eyes on the bandages and nothing else.

Peter stumbles into the bedroom while Tony takes a quick shower (he’d like to say a cold one, but, fittingly, his body feels like he’s been hit by a plane, and strenuously protests that idea). He stares at the off-white tile and thinks about nothing, as a litany of horrors plays behind his eyes, over and over and over. 

Then, after that, finally, shutting off the bathroom light, Tony notices what had completely passed him by in his earlier panic.

Typical.

Peter looks up at him from where he’s sitting on the bed in nothing but a towel, rigidly upright.

“A double bed! Not even a queen,” Tony says. “Don’t break the bank or anything, Fury. Don’t mind us, out here saving the world.”

Peter frowns.

“You don’t have to… I mean, I think there was a couch in the other room, if you’re not-”

Tony looks at him. Peter looks back.

Tony sighs, and wonders how exactly his life has led to this moment.

He gets in the bed.

There’s not so much an elephant in the room as there is an entire herd of them. Pink ones.

Tony can hear the steady rhythm of Peter’s breathing from beside him where he’s laid out flat, in what he had said earlier was the only position that didn’t hurt. They’re not touching, not quite, but a double bed doesn’t leave much room for Jesus, and it’s like there’s electricity there, like he can feel the atoms of Peter’s skin vibrating against his own.

_ In and out. In and out. In and out- _

He can still remember what it sounded like when Peter took his last, gasping breath on Titan, before his lungs had dissolved into nothing, and Tony had been kneeling there, in the dust, alone.

Peter’s breath hitches, and before Tony can stop himself his head jerks over to look at him.

It’s nearly pitch black in the bedroom, and the only thing Tony can make out is an impression of those big, dark eyes staring up at him.

“Sorry,” Peter says. “You just looked- are you okay?”

“Sure,” Tony says. “Fine. Peachy.”

He thinks he can make out Peter frowning. His head tips up, scant inches away from Tony’s.

“I can, um. Hear your heart beating.”

Tony closes his eyes.

“Right. Of course you can.” 

“So if you- wanted to talk about it-”

“I’m selfish, Peter,” Tony interrupts, like it’s dragged out of him, too raw, too honest. “I can’t lose you again. I can’t. I wouldn’t survive it.”

He can see the edges of Peter’s eyes widening in surprise. 

“I- I’m not _trying_ to put myself in danger, but I can’t just – you _know_ I can’t just-”

“Yeah,” Tony says, even as it hurts. “I know.”

God, does he know.

There’s a shifting sound,and then suddenly Peter is - touching him, hesitant and gentle, curling his hand over Tony’s waist, where his shirt rides up slightly. He can’t even remember the last time anyone’s touched him quite like that. It hits him, suddenly, how very long it’s been since he’s shared a bed with someone. 

There’s a scar there, underneath Peter’s fingers, years and years old, barely visible in the light. Tony doesn’t even remember where it’s from. Peter traces one fingertip over it, back and forth, sending violent little shivers up Tony’s spine.

“You don’t have to,” Peter says suddenly, barely a whisper shattering the muffling quiet of the room. “Lose me. I don’t- you know you can have me for as long as you want.” And now he’s not talking about his death wish at all, is he.

“I really can’t,” Tony says. There’s nothing he’s better at than fucking up a good thing.

“Says who?”

Tony feels himself smile, despite himself.

“Says, I don’t know, the laws of the universe.”

“You literally invented a new element, since when have the laws of the universe ever stopped you?”

“I did, didn’t I? You’re right, that was pretty impressive, huh,” Tony muses, and Peter laughs.

Tony likes that laugh a lot.

Fuck it. Being responsible is overrated. 

Tony rolls over fully, balancing himself on his elbows above Peter. He stares down at him, heartbeat thundering in his ears. He traces down the bridge of Peter’s nose, across his cheekbones, over his lips, memorizing every line of his face. Peter holds himself very, very still, like if he moves Tony will suddenly realize what he’s doing and stop.

“Are you… what changed your mind?” Peter whispers.

_ Maybe I can’t protect you, but I can at least make you happy. For as long as that lasts. For whatever the fuck that’s worth. _

“What do you mean? That was an extremely convincing argument, Mr. Parker,” Tony says instead. Then he leans down and kisses him, sharp, fierce, desperate. Peter sucks in a sharp breath and eagerly kisses back, teeth clicking together jarringly because of the awkward angle. Tony grabs his jaw to tilt him up, and -

And Peter makes a winded, pained noise, and Tony pulls back to see him wincing, his good hand fluttering up to his ribs.

“I, ah, might have bad timing,” Tony says.

“You have perfect timing,” Peter says. “I want to feel something other than the after effects of nearly dying in a plane crash. Please.”

“So you admit you nearly died-”

_"Tony-”_ he bites out, impatient, grabbing at Tony’s hand.

Probably, definitely, absolutely a bad idea – but Tony does love bad ideas.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to hold still,” Tony says.

He takes his time. He kisses the delicate skin of Peter’s wrists and feels his pulse thundering underneath his lips. He kisses the vulnerable spot behind his knee, the jut of his hipbone, every deceptively fragile part of his body, of his perfect, miraculous, living, breathing body. He kisses back up his chest, gentle, so gentle, avoiding his folded-in left arm, skims his teeth over one nipple to hear the startled noise Peter makes. He does it again, and again, until Peter’s making pleading, ragged noises. He presses his mouth to every barely-there bruise, already fading into nothing.

Then, finally, he wraps his hand around Peter’s cock, already hard from barely being touched.

“I normally can be a little more inventive than this, but my options are pretty limited at the moment,” Tony murmurs, kissing up his neck to his ear.

“That’s – ah – that’s fine, I’ll just- remember that for next time-” Peter says, breathless, his right hand clenching and unclenching in the sheets. His entire body trembles with the effort of not moving.

It’s sweet, and slow, and perfect, and Tony’s mind works overtime to file away every tiny, bitten-off noise Peter makes.

He tips his forehead against Peter’s as he grinds against his hip, almost as an afterthought when he has Peter splayed out perfectly underneath him. He circles his thumb around the head of Peter’s dick, making him gasp and jerk his shoulders off the bed. 

“I said to hold still,” Tony says, pushing back down on his shoulder, and he can feel the way Peter shivers underneath of him, the way he swallows audibly.

“Sorry, sir,” Peter says, and Tony’s pretty sure he doesn’t even realize what he’s said. He really shouldn’t like that, but he does, god help him he does.

“So _now_ you’re polite,” he says, nipping at Peter’s earlobe with his teeth, heat sparking uncontrollably deep in his stomach. He’s already right on the edge, his hips picking up speed, and it’s almost embarrassing, how easily he’s affected. “Fascinating. I wonder what I should do with that.”

“Anything,” Peter says, ragged, meaning it too damn much. “Anything you want.” 

“Careful, sweetheart, I’ll hold you to that,” Tony says, as if he wants anything else other than to see Peter, like this, every day for as long as he’s allowed. He lets Peter fuck desperately into his hand, watching greedily as he comes, nearly silent, head tipped back and mouth open. He shivers and grinds against Peter’s hip one last time, tipping over the edge to the look on his face.

Afterwards, Tony looks over and notices that at some point Peter had ripped the sheets in his right hand. 

“I’ll take the compliment,” he says. 

Peter flushes.

“Yeah, uh, sorry, sometimes I get a little. Distracted,” he says.

“Guess I’m cutting Fury a check,” Tony says dryly. “Actually, I’ll pay for them to renovate the whole place, this is just an embarrassment.” He lays down on his side, facing Peter. “Just so you know, if it weren’t for your ribs, there would be cuddling happening right now.”

Peter smiles, tremulous, hopeful, and winds his fingers of his good hand through Tony’s.

“That’s okay, I can wait until next time,” he says, satisfied, eyes already slipping shut.

“Next time it is,” Tony murmurs, staring down at their hands.

He should probably start regretting this soon. Any minute now. 

He’s going to wake up tomorrow and all of the reasons he said no the first time will still be there. It’s still going to be a catastrophically bad idea.

But he has a pretty decent track record on those, and if there’s one thing that can be said for Tony Stark, it’s that he always goes all-in.

So, hell - he’ll take his chances. 


End file.
